Primary Care Network Workforce, 31 March 2022

Gender and age breakdowns

For the first time, this release of Primary Care Network Workforce statistics relating to 31 March 2022 includes breakdowns by gender and age band. Tables 1a and 1b now include full-time equivalent and headcount numbers at England level with a breakdown of gender for each job role. New Tables 2a and 2b present a breakdown of age band for each staff group at England level. These numbers have been produced for all previous reporting periods.

New Advanced Practitioner job roles

During March 2022 a set of Direct Patient Care advanced practitioner roles were added to the NWRS collection tool. The six roles which are applicable to the Primary Care Network Workforce are:

• Advanced Dietician Practitioner
• Advanced Occupational Therapist Practitioner
• Advanced Paramedic Practitioner
• Advanced Pharmacist Practitioner
• Advanced Physiotherapist Practitioner
• Advanced Podiatrist Practitioner

The way these roles are selected is different than for other roles, which are chosen from a drop-down list. For the advanced practitioner roles relating to the Direct Patient Care staff group, users are now presented with a tick box whenever they choose a Direct Patient Care job role. For example, when the job role pharmacist is selected from the drop-down list, the user is given the option to populate the tick box to indicate that this individual is an advanced pharmacist practitioner.  Wherever an individual's record has this tick populated for one of the six roles listed, they will be counted against the relevant advanced practitioner role. 
 
It is likely that prior to the introduction of this functionality, some advanced practitioners were being recorded against the corresponding regular job role. For example, advanced pharmacist practitioners may have previously been recorded as pharmacists. The reclassification of these individuals into advanced practitioner roles would therefore lead to a decrease in reported pharmacist FTE and headcounts, but this apparent decrease would in fact be the result of improved data quality and this should be considered when making comparisons between figures prior to March 2022 with figures from March 2022 onwards. The same applies to all six Direct Patient Care job roles which now have corresponding advanced practitioner roles.
 
As these advanced practitioner roles were newly added to NWRS in March 2022, FTE and headcounts for these roles will be presented from March 2022 onwards in the time series tables.

Staff breakdowns by ethnicity

For the release of Primary Care Network Workforce statistics relating to June 2022, we plan to produce additional breakdowns within the Excel bulletin file presenting staff full-time equivalent and headcounts by ethnicity and staff group.  

New publication - Primary Care Workforce Quarterly Update

We are planning to introduce a quarterly publication using additional data sources to complement this publication, which will bring together FTE staff working in general practice, including ad-hoc locums, and those working in Primary Care Networks and potentially GPs working in other settings such as A&E streaming. The first experimental edition is scheduled for release on 19 May 2022 and will initially present FTE primary care workforce statistics for the direct patient care, nurse and admin/non-clinical staff groups, with the GP staff group being released in June, once final ad-hoc locum data becomes available.